...In the novella "Of Mice and Men" isolation is a very important theme because all the characters undergo many different types and forms of isolation. Each character is set apart with their own struggles against isolation as a whole. Namely, Lennie is seen to be the most troubled character due to his disabilities. In addition, Crooks has to deal with isolation due to the color of his skin. Finally, Curly's wife struggles with not being able to talk to others because of Curly's obsessiveness. Indeed, isolation as a whole plays a large part in each characters life placing a weight of disabilities, racism, and detachment from socializing on their shoulders. Throughout the book, there are many things that set Lennie apart from the others on the ranch. Mental disabilities hinder someone's chances of getting and or keeping a job. In Lenny's case, he lost his life due to his mental disorder. It led him to be isolated from everyone else and ultimately led to his own demise. Curly's wife showed discomfort with being around Lenny because she thought he "was nuts" and soon after she was killed by him (90). His disabilities led him to kill and injure many living things which in turn led to his death. He was seen as a wild...
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...The novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is replete with thematic ideas. the most important of these is isolation. Without isolation,the mood of the book would not be evident, and it is the fear of isolation that drives the characters to do and regret things. Isolation is what makes the book. John Steinbeck’s message about isolation in the novel is that fear of isolation is what people are afraid just the idea of isolation is scary to our characters . As Crooks says in the book that they never let him come into the bunk house nor do they let him play games with them. Crooks hated being isolated and he fears that he will always be that way. This kind of thought in the book drives the helpless feeling that they have no control. It's a rough time for everyone. Another example would be with Candy when he loses his dogs. The sense of helplessness comes up with the isolation.”I ought to of shot that dog myself,George. I shouldn't ought of let no stranger shoot my dog.”This quote proves how candy felt helpless. When they talk about how the silence was almost alive, it drives home the feeling of isolation in the book. Without the feeling of isolation many things would have been and felt different to the reader. In the novel isolation is the main thematic idea because...
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..."Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." said Mother Teresa. Isolation can lead the kindest of people angry and aggressive. It can make the strongest of people feeling weak and useless. John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, shows that loneliness and isolation can have negative impacts on its victims. First of all, Isolation can make people feel unwanted, leading them to make others feel the same way. In Steinbeck's story, Crooks wanted to make Lennie feel unwanted by being rude to him and trying to get him to leave. On page 68 Crooks said sharply, "You got no right to come in my room. This here's my room. Nobody got any right in here but me." Although it was Crooks's room, he could have given Lennie a chance to see if he wasn't like the others. Crooks eventually did allow Lennie to stay after realizing that he has someone to talk to for a while. He didn't care that Lennie wasn't paying attention to what was being said, he was just glad that he had...
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...Having dreams and passions for the future is what everyone considers. Unfortunately, dreaming for the future can have a variety of obstacles. John Steinbeck, the author of Of Mice and Men effectively teaches the reader about isolation and broken dreams. Steinbeck uses Lennie, George, Crooks and Curley’s wife to prove the deep feeling of isolation composed from loss of verisimilitude and broken dreams. Isolation not only happens because of human environment, but because of skin color. Isolation for a long time makes a character in the novel, Crooks, unmotivated to be social. The author effectively sets an example of isolation when Lennie decided to talk to Crooks, “ Lennie smiled helplessly in an attempt to make friend. Crooks said sharply,...
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...Loneliness and isolation; the unfortunate reality of having the slightest chance of success. All people face the provocation of having no one by their side, yet facing a world full of challenges. Every person must fend for themselves in order to achieve the great American dream. In the novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck shows loneliness and the need for companionship through characters, conflict, and setting. Steinbeck depicts the effects of loneliness through characters in Of Mice and Men. Curley’s wife is possibly the loneliest character demonstrated in the book Of Mice and Men. She says, “I never get to talk to nobody.” (Steinbeck 86) This quote suggests it isn’t just Lennie and George who distance themselves from Curley’s wife; it is...
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...Of Mice and Men: Thematic Ideas In the novella, Of Mice and Men (1937), John Steinbeck asserts many different important thematic ideas in the lives of two migrant farmers, George and Lennie through their dreams of owning their own house and living a better life with their hardships and obstacles. Steinbeck supports his ideas by successfully symbolizing many realistic ideas and problems of the twentieth century through his characters. In this fictional tragedy, the purpose is to amplify the nature of being human through isolation, dreams, reality, obstacles, and sacrifice. Steinbeck successfully develops the importance and meanings of dreams and reality, unity and isolation, and the marginalization of different characters. Steinbeck enforces...
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...Loneliness in “Of Mice and Men” Friends are needed in a person’s life for emotional stability whom without would lead to a life of loneliness and solitude. In the novel, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the characters Crooks, Candy and Curly’s wife exhibit a form of loneliness. They are driven to George and Lennie’s friendship because they lack support and that emotional stability in their own lives."A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't matter no difference who the guy is, longs he with you. I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an he gets sick" (Steinbeck, 13). Throughout his novel, Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck shows that victims of isolation crave to fulfill a companionship to fill in that void of loneliness. Firstly, Crooks, a handicapped black man, experiences isolation because of his race and disability and seeks to be a part of someone’s life. Crooks is physically separated from the other men as he has his own room in the barn and has limited social contact because he tends the horses. Crooks’s loneliness forces him to translucently share his bottled thoughts to Lennie when he comes into his room, and asks to be a part of the dream George and Lennie share, "...If you...guys would want a hand to work for nothing--just his keep, why I'd come an' lend a hand..." (Steinbeck 88). This shows that Crooks wants to be engaged with other people in his life despite his inability to see beyond the prejudice and discrimination he has always experienced. Secondly, the character...
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...Of Mice and Men is one of the most widely assigned modern novels in high schools because of both its form and the issues that it raises. John Steinbeck’s reliance on dialogue, as opposed to contextual description, makes the work accessible to young readers, as does his use of foreshadowing and recurrent images. Equally important is the way in which he intertwines the themes of loneliness and friendship and gives dignity to those characters, especially Lennie and Crooks, who are clearly different from their peers. By focusing on a group of lonely drifters, Steinbeck highlights the perceived isolation and sense of “otherness” that can seem so overwhelming when one is growing up. Of Mice and Men is also important because it explores the way in which events can conspire against the realization of one’s dreams. It pits a group of flawed individuals against a set of circumstances that they are unable to master or, in the case of Lennie, even to comprehend. This is a theme that Steinbeck also explores in his classic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). When Steinbeck began Of Mice and Men, he was planning to write a children’s book called Something That Happened. His intent was to demonstrate that events often have a momentum of their own and need not reflect the existence of a higher power that is exacting punishment. Perhaps it was for this reason that he decided to retitle the book, drawing from Robert Burns’s oft-quoted poem “To a Mouse,” which contains the line “The best-laid...
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...Through a list of harsh truths, John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men casts humanity in an unfavorable light. These include loneliness, oppression, and imperfection. The grim realities of the hardworking characters are revealed through their actions to rise above challenges and in the end their defeats These truths are all used to build the complex main theme of friendship and the effect it can have on an individual's life. Of Mice and Men exposes the validity,loneliness, of people during the Great Depression. For instance Curly’s wife seeks attention ,positive or negative, from anyone on the ranch because of her isolation being the only woman present. When confronted with her isolation she says,“Wha’s the matter with me?Ain’t I got...
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...There are many acts of friendship and sacrifice displayed throughout the book Of Mice Men. The author, John Steinbeck, demonstrates friendship between two migrant workers, Lennie and George. Lennie and George are different from most migrant workers because they travel together not alone. Of Mice and Men, shadows the lives of George and Lennie as try to achieve the american dream of owning their own land and livestock. George and Lennie work to achieve their dream by working successfully on a ranch in California until Lennie kills Curley’s wife accidentally. Sacrifice and friendship is exhibited when George kills Lennie at the end of the book. George gives Lennie a more peaceful death, but in return he has to live in isolation without his best friend. The previous statements are justification for, in fact George is right to have killed Lennie. Readers are prepared for the killing of Lennie by George when Candy decides to let Carlson shoot his dog. Candy later reveals his regret by stating, “‘I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn’t ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.’”(61). If George left Lennie’s killing up to the other men that worked on the ranch, Lennie would have likely had a more gruesome death. If George had made decided not to take responsibility and shoot Lennie, he...
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...At the time of the Great Depression the U.S created a repatriation program that deported people of mexican descent, 400,000 were repatriated, sometimes against their will. In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men, there are many overarching themes, these themes help the author show the hard times of the Great Depression. One such theme would be the prevalence of loneliness in many of the characters. Another theme would be the discrimination against a number of characters, in the different forms such as sexism and racism. Lastly, many dreams in the novel go unfulfilled leaving many characters with the weight of failure. Throughout the Great Depression human compassion was as rare as a job, this led to widespread loneliness, that, in turn, is apparent...
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...An Optimistic approach in Of Mice and Men Steinbeck’s use of imagery, foreshadowing and motif in Of Mice and Men sends the message that this novella is very optimistic based. First of all Steinbeck uses imagery very frequently throughout the book to describe scenery and characters. In the beginning chapter, Steinbeck describes the valleys and mountains where Lennie and George spend their time before working on the ranch as “the golden foothill slopes that curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees (...)” (Steinbeck 1). In this scene, Steinbeck uses very descriptive words to clearly describe the surrounding environment. The reader pictures a beautiful image of mountains and valleys in between, along with a gorgeous lake in front of a park with large sycamores scattered on the ground. The reader is able to think very positively when they read this quote because it brings out the small, beautiful things in the world, which allows them to think of this novella a bright and optimistic based story. Moreover, Steinbeck uses foreshadowing that allows the reader to think ahead and predict the outcomes in the future and the book in general. There are many examples of foreshadowing in Of Mice and Men, such as the following. "Lennie looked sadly up at him. 'They was so little,' he said, apologetically. 'I'd pet 'em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their little heads a little and then they was dead -- because...
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...In 1992, Gary Sinise made a movie version of Steinbeck John’s novel, “Of Mice and Men.” Both the movie and book are set in California during the Great Depression era and tells the story of two men, constantly in the run trying to make a living. The two main character George and Lennie, whose role was well played by Gary Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lennie are a team of two. George being the brains and Lennie being the bronze. The two of them are different from all those other ranch workers as mentioned frequently throughout the movie and book by George, “With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.” This dialogue is pivotal piece in the entire story because one of the main themes...
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...How does Steinbeck portray the theme of loneliness and isolation? In Steinbeck’s novel ‘of mice and men’ there is much emphasis on loneliness and isolation. The novel ‘of mice and men’ was set and written in 1920’s America during the great depression. The great depression was the time in which professional workers became migrant, and caused many of them to turn to working in farmland harvesting wheat, and others had to go and possibly try and find work on a ranch. Loneliness and isolation can be defined as when a person is on their own and don’t have anyone to talk to or not allowed to do things, for example, in the novel it mentions that the workers are playing solitaire, “George cut the cards again and put out a solitaire lay…” Solitaire is a one-player card game, so this also emphasizes loneliness. In this essay I will explore how Steinbeck creates loneliness and isolation in his novel ‘of mice and men’. Steinbeck uses a lot of past tense, for example, at the end of the novel, Curley’s wife is talking to Lennie and she said that she ‘had’ a dream, and she could have become famous. Curley’s wife is perhaps the loneliest person of all on the ranch. Since she is the only female on the ranch, she is set apart from the others. She doesn’t have a name because she is a female and women have lower statuses than men. As she is the only female on the ranch, Curley’s wife is lonely and sad- something her marriage to Curley only makes worse she reveals throughout the course of the...
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...In the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, loneliness is a powerful motif. This motif is constantly repeated throughout the story and helps the reader receive Steinbeck's view on isolation. John Steinbeck is saying that loneliness was normal during the Great Depression. As depicted in his novel, it was out of the norm to find two migrant workers travelling together, for everyone was scared of each other and many suffered as a result of being alone for too long. During the Great Depression, it was rare to see two migrant workers travelling together. When the two main characters, George and Lennie, were talking, they were saying that "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family.... With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us" (Steinbeck 15). George and Lennie were saying that most migrant workers travelled alone and rarely had a companion. Unlike most, George and Lennie had each other...
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